| Journal |
Fall 2001
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Students and alumni participate in mission
to Fiji
By, Nancy Yuen
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| Alumni actively take part in supervising dental and dental hygiene students. Dr. Marta Kalbermatter supervised the Fiji clinic the second week. Here she is assisted by dental student Nathan Carlson. |
As part of the School’s service learning
program seven dental students and three dental hygiene students recently
traveled to Buca (pronounced “butha”) Bay, Fiji in the South
Pacific, where they volunteered in a dental clinic.
The group included: fourth-year dental students Jason Ballou, Shea Bess,
Byron Diehl, Michael Giddings, Todd Schroeder, and Steve Wernick; third-year
dental student Nathan Carlson; and dental hygiene students Stephanie Sobieski,
Emily Springsted, and Joann Grosso.
Alumni actively take part in supervising dental and dental hygiene students
who are participating in service learning projects. The week of June 11
to 15 Larry Dunford, SD’82, supervised the clinic. His wife, Terri,
and her friend, Norma Lyons, volunteered in the sterilization room where
they cleaned, sorted, and readied hundreds of dental instruments. Dr.
Dunford met with the students each evening to go over the day’s events
and to discuss how to make the clinic more efficient.
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After a long day
in clinic Dr. Larry Dunford, president of National Association of
Seventh Day Adventist Dentists, held staff meetings outdoors with
the students. Dr. Dunford supervised the students the first week
of the two week mission trip.
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The Buca Bay clinic is on the grounds of
Vatuvonu Adventist School, and is made possible through the efforts of
the Dream Machine Foundation, an organization run by Steve Arrington,
former lead diver for Jacques Cousteau. The clinic is open only when volunteers
are available to staff it.
The week before the LLU group arrived town messengers spread the news
that the clinic would be open. Patients’ charts listed their residences
by village: Tukavesi, Mereoni, Suina, Natewa, Buca, Koroivonu, Kana Kana,
and Loa. To reach the clinic, patients traveled many miles by foot, boat,
and by bus.
The second week Marta Kalbermatter, SD’85,
supervised the busy clinic. Dr. Kalbermatter grew up as a missionary child
on the Amazon, and learned at an early age that missions are not luxurious;
timetables and schedules are at times sketchy; equipment is not always
shiny and new—and commitment to missions also includes hard work!
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In the clinic she answered questions and
worked side-by-side with the students. “Working in the clinic provided
experiences the students would not get in an urban setting, and the students
also gained experience which helped improve their self- confidence,”
she says. By the end of the second week, the students had extracted 358
teeth, completed 182 fillings, and cleaned the teeth of 58 patients.
“The students worked very well together,” says Dr. Kalbermatter,
“and became like a family by the end of the trip.”
The students rated the trip highly. A return trip
for the summer of 2002 has been planned, and so many students want to
go that there is a waiting list.
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All rights reserved. Revised February 14, 2001
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